


Average Days

by Antartique



Series: AUs I may write occassionally [2]
Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Conspiracy, Gen, M/M, Reincarnation, Religious Conflict, Supernatural Elements, World Domination
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-06
Updated: 2016-07-06
Packaged: 2018-07-21 21:15:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7405096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antartique/pseuds/Antartique
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world run by a worldwide conspiracy and an unspecific religious organisation, a witch hunts witches, psychic warmongers wish to own the world and a clown who hates clowns wishes to have a peaceful life. The love of two brothers from millennia ago goes too far and a man scrambles to hold all the pieces.</p><p>A tale of an over-competent psychic spy smitten with a pacifist underground heir. Or also, the repeat of another life that repeats time after time, for there is no answer but death in their lives. </p><p>It is a very sad tale. But also, it is not serious at all.</p><p>(Also featuring: spoilers.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Average Days

**Author's Note:**

  * For [soyoyagi (soyokaze)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soyokaze/gifts).



> **Hallows is out.** That's all.

In a way, they weren’t really joking when they said they were childhood friends. They _did_ meet when they were children/teenagers, when Link was 13 and some child soldier for the government under Lvellie’s command, but they weren’t really… friends. In many ways, one could have considered them mortal enemies of sorts: one, a government-assigned agent in the hunt for a certain organisation; the other, the sole heir of said organisation.

However, they didn’t know they were _enemies_ at that time. They had met, been awkward around each other and gone their own ways. Many people would say that that was the beginning of some _love_ story from fairy tales themselves, a pair of star crossed lovers defying the nature of their very beings and their family and some nonsense, but for them it had been…

Awkward.

Their first meeting was the most awkward moment in all of their shared memories and whenever people ask about them, Link will always claim he doesn’t remember. They are childhood friends, they don’t remember how they met each other, that makes lots of sense when one is not aware of their professional relationship. Not many people are aware of their relationship, especially not the professional one, so that is… fine. For now.

It is _fine_.

 

Back when Howard Link had been little, the world had seemed really simple. Since very young he had been part of the church, part of the weird group of psychic children they kept around for the shadiest business they dealt with. Things as simple as watching out for breaches, keeping the wards up; not much problem for them, even if they rarely lived to see their third decade.

That was okay for Link. He had a room, a comfortable bed, food and didn’t have to do much. Peek into the minds of some high profile guests. Reinforce the wards around the deepest archives. Fix some things if they were really understaffed. None of these jobs were really hard for him, and whenever he had some free time, he would train. Train until he was able to lift a feather from the other end of a hallway, until he could identify his companions in the vast city, until he could single out which tourists were real tourists and which ones were dangerous. And then, he would read, because knowledge is a good thing.

Except, then he had been handed over to Lvellie, and life wasn’t so simple anymore. The Head Inquisitor had always been a man Link admired, as a person, not as Inquisitor. There was something, something fundamentally wrong about a person who wanted to hunt witches when half those working for him _were_ witches, but Lvellie had always been of the idea of fight fire with fire. And so, Link became part of the witch hunting witches: descendants of Noah blood hunting for the main Noah family.

Lvellie always claimed his interest in the Noah was purely academic. No one believed him, partly because he was _Lvellie_ and misleading like the Minotaur’s labyrinth, but mostly because he worked for the people who wanted to eradicate the Noah (or at least steal all their assets, connections and power).

When Link was 13, the witch hunt situation had reached an impasse. The Noah had retreated, changed their chain of command until all their gathered information became useless, while the Inquisition refused to accept outside help. There were no leads to follow.

And then they met Mana Campbell.

 

“It is very nice to meet you, Inspector Lvellie.”

Mana Campbell was an amiable looking man, with a _top hat_ of all things and a gentleman’s cane held tightly in his hands. He had black hair, sharp looking silver eyes and weighed more than what Lvellie, Link and the whole of CROW ate together in a week. His tone was friendly in the way that made people want to punch him in the face, and his lazy-looking posture was betrayed by his constant need to confirm his surroundings.

Then there was the kid, no older than 10, with the same silver eyes and the same wavy mop of hair as Campbell, except his was _red_. Not red like ginger-red, but red like the sunset mixed with blood and strawberry candy, many shades of red streaked with silvery white. He stared, at Lvellie, at Link, and made constant contact with twinkling eyes which was freaky enough as it was.

Link didn’t cower. He stared back. And stared, and stared, until he felt the subtle push in his mind that indicated a psychic’s touch.

The boy recoiled, wide eyed, when Link threw up every single mental defence he knew how to build. Mana Campbell eyed him, never stopping his conversation with Lvellie (about some information, or maybe some person that died? Link wasn’t paying attention, he was too busy staring), and then patted his head. Again, there was a brush in his mind, a mocking giggle, and then a voice, soft, yet surprisingly forceful like the one of whom was used to never being denied anything:

 _‘I’m Neah Campbell,’_ the boy nodded, almost imperceptibly, and the giggle came back, _‘and that is Auguste. You are?’_

Link stared, because he had _never_ met another telepath who could hold a casual conversation in their mind without showing it outside (then again, he had never met many psychics at all). A small sweep of his mind revealed the boy was staying on the surface, where conscious thinking tended to form, and he relaxed internally.

_‘Howard Link. Nice to meet you.’_

The boy, Neah, grinned. _‘Do I call you Howard, or Link, or Blondie?’_

He almost choked on air.

 

That first meeting had ended in disaster. Details were kept unsaid, forgotten and never to be remembered again.

 

After that day, the impasse between the Noah and the- the church, vanished.

The Noah began moving around even more, hints of their influence appearing worldwide and it business they hadn’t usually gotten involved with. The church scrambled to catch up, but they were all old fashioned fools who wouldn’t dare use the new technologies or hire new people.

In a way, the next years were wasted.

That is, until Cross Marian finally decided to help.

 

Cross Marian and Maria were a pair of freelance supernatural detectives who the church hired occasionally for their extensive information networks and skills. If it involved the Noah, or even any wayward Noah descendant causing havoc, they would usually be involved. They has the most information on the Noah ever gathered through the ages, including (apparently) the current leaders.

“Just so you know, this will cost you your life’s paycheck,” Cross Marian said, taking a thin folder from Maria’s hands and placing it on Lvellie’s desk. Link looked dubiously at the folder, curious about its contents, but wary of its thinness. If they were paying so much for the information, it better be worth it. “Maria?”

“Yes,” she says, taking another sheet of paper from her briefcase, placing it atop the folder. The amount of zeroes in the number was… way too much for Link to make sense of. “The account details have been sent to your inbox. Please transfer the correct amount before the first day of November. If not possible, contact us and we shall send you the updated details as well as the delay tax percentage.

“Additional information gathered for the next year will be charged and mailed to you in due time, as per agreement. If you need information concerning anything outside the paid for topic, procedure will be the same as always.”

Both Lvellie and Link stared at the woman. Maria didn’t usually accompany Cross Marian anywhere outside her comfort zone and people were the worst of her anxiety triggers, from what they had gathered. Her voice was plain, toneless, almost robotic, and she blinked once every thirty chronometric seconds; otherwise, she was completely motionless asides from responses to Cross’s cues. Even when she had come in, it had taken them a few seconds to realise she _was_ there: her unnatural stillness was astounding. And terrifying.

Cross waved a hand, and the pale woman stepped back without a single twitch. That finally snapped Lvellie out of his daze, as he reached for the folder and opened it with finality. Cross nodded in acceptance of the binding movement, and stood up with all the grace and elegance he always seemed to have when in the job.

“We will be in contact.” With that, he strolled off the room, Maria following after a stiff bow to the inspector.

“That man will be the end of us,” Lvellie muttered to himself and Link nodded in agreement. Cross Marian was a terrifying enemy, yet an indispensable ally.

The folder contained only three papers. One was a list of names and locations Lvellie set aside for later. The second and third were overly detailed profile sheets, each with its picture, with the third marked as ‘to be confirmed’.

The two pictures were parts of a whole, blurry in the way pictures were when they were taken with the maximum zoom. Mana and Neah Campbell, older than the first and last time they had met, juggled together in a grass field, throwing what seemed to be knives at each other in a well practised cycle.

Lvellie cursed. Link picked up the profile sheets, memorising the information out of habit, before focusing in the one contradiction printed tidily in Neah’s sheet.

**_14th. The Musician. (?)_ **

 

There were only thirteen Noah.

That was a fact they had accepted centuries ago, though it was confirmed only the current decade after long, long years of investigation, fact referencing and cross-referencing, and some trial records from the old ages when the Inquisition was still stuck in the Bloody Ages. Back from when the Noah were less of an invisible, worldwide puppeteer and more of a sect, or cult, focused on creating chaos for the sake of _progress_.

Of course, they weren’t _only_ thirteen. They were hundreds of them around, but all of them answered to the Thirteen. Wayward psychics with nowhere to go, merchants and politicians, scholars, children of previous ‘members’... At the top, each one of them with their troupe of mad men to command, were the Thirteen: the Earl and his cohort, of the purest and strongest blood and whatnot.

The Thirteen changed periodically, each one appearing with a large showcase of power. When the latest Noah of Pleasure took over, they suddenly found themselves with more casinos in one corner of Asia. When it was the Noah of Dreams, there was a major security breach in the largest countries (though it was a huge scandal, no information was actually stolen. Instead, they each found themselves with new wallpapers and screensavers in some computers). Ages ago, it was a massive construction and reconstruction of railway roads in Europe for the Noah of Bonds, and a few times the Earl had began wars for the fun of it.

All these actions went with authorship unclaimed, but the church _always_ wrote them down as Noah. If there was something abnormal going on somewhere, it was _probably_ Noah. The sanest people in the know tried to keep others from blaming everything on the Noah, but it was such a deep seated animosity that it was a battle lost.

No one knew how Noah organised themselves internally, just like no one knew _how on Earth_ they kept themselves connected, or how they recruited new nameless minions, or how they chose their leaders, but everyone agreed on one thing. There were only thirteen ‘named’ Noah. Only thirteen people commanded the whole conspiracy. Only thirteen people would step forward if someone called for the Noah to step forward. Only thirteen people had to be found to unravel the knot of connections, power, money and everything in between.

The Earl. The Judge. Pleasure. Desire. Wisdom. Corrosion. Pity. Wrath. Dreams. Bonds One and Two. Lust. Ability. Those were the Noah. There was no other Noah.

Yet, here was a fourteenth Noah.

Neah Campbell.

 

The search for the Noah, though very interesting, quickly became a competition between Lvellie and his minions, but mostly between Lvellie and Link. Sure, at first they had been focused on it because of _academic interest_ , but soon it… degraded. Badly.

They had a tally board, back home. A board of how many leads each one had found, how many each had managed to follow (10 points) and how many times they had actually sighted a Noah (50 points). It was ridiculous, but since Link was always just a step behind Lvellie, he considered it a fair game. Really fair.

The thing was a constant competition. It kept them slightly more awake than their regular duties. But that was all it had as a positive outcome. Otherwise, it was just a really strong distractor.

Link had taken over the search for Neah Campbell, because he was the only one who had actually interacted with the boy. It didn’t help that he may have wanted revenge for their first meeting, but, well. The feeling of both Auguste and the Musician in the back of his mind was something both treasured and hated, remembered as one of the few people who had managed to get into Link’s mind without a try at all, and because he had kind of liked the kid back when they met.

Only then, though. Neah Campbell was probably the one spoiled kid in the world who Link liked, but he was still complete and absolute trash.

What had been academic interest in the Noah had become a competition, though. Searching for Neah Campbell had become something entertaining to Link, as well as being his job (only at times), so if he became ignoring his regular duties that was all good. Besides, searching for Neah Campbell was an all-time occupation; first, because Noah were impossible to find and second, because Neah Campbell in particular kept skipping town whenever he felt like it.

Link had tracked him down to a school, then to another school. Then another continent. The next country. Then back in England, then a half-year long cruise in the middle of the Caribbean sea. Then he had settled down only long enough to make friends, which was surprising on itself, and then he had vanished again for another few months. He was impossible to keep in the radar, impossible to keep track of and also impossibly hyperactive.

Neah Campbell lived a really peripatetic life. His name was also really nomadic on itself, which didn’t help matters at all.

Link had tracked Neah Campbell to a school. Then, he had to follow Red Campbell to another school, where he got expelled for contraband. Red Walker had adopted a dog, named it Cross. Mana Campbell (because he got lonely at times) had also adopted a dog, but this one was named Maria. Then, Allen Campbell buried the dog (at that time named Crow, because why not)  in an island in Central America. Allen Walker then belatedly applied to college, where he got in and didn’t last three years. Lavi (he had stolen the name from his roommate) then reappeared somewhere in Russia, or was it Belarus, after making his own church and maybe even a whole army.

It had gotten to a point where Allen Walker’s (he had settled down, there was paperwork under his name) friends had gotten tired of it and decided to get him a job. So there Link found him for the last time, seeing him through the window of a high-class casino, tricking people into betting against him and cheating them off their money.

By that point, Howard Link’s job of tracking down the Musician had become more of Howard Link’s hobby of tracking down the Musician. At the end of the day, he had fun with it, and if he had to give up on some of his sweets for the sake of funding his hobby, he would.

He was not a stalker.

He still is not a stalker.

Still, confronting Allen Walker had become a difficult affair after the sixth year of his definitely-not-stalking job. For a long time, he had just… watched. Watched Allen Walker, worked in the sidelines, and thought of how to face the so-called Musician about his so-called Noah family.

(He never did that, in the end. Which may be the reason why their lives went the course they did.)


End file.
